Born Again

I saw a section on CNN about famous people who were 'born again'. I didn't care since I hardly knew who any of these 'famous' people were but it did start me thinking about the concept of 'born again'.

Here are some ways that being 'born again' changes a person (on Wiki). Of course it's different for different types of people of which apparently there are only 3.

• Its effects vary with the type of person involved:
• rebirth is expressed in a new alignment of the will
• to the breakthrough of a "vision"
• With others it leads to the discovery of an unexpected beauty in the order of nature
• they develop a direct and personal relationship with God.

Notice the abiguity of all of this? The last one is the one you hear so often but what does it mean? I'll state right now that I myself have a direct and personal relationship with God. Prove that I don't.

To be born again you apparently don't have to do anything. It just happens to you and then you too can be a prosylitizing asshole! No school. No orals (well except for the Catholics). No tests of any kind. How smarmy. "I'm born again". Now you must gaze upon me differently. You see me on a different plane from you don't you?

Try going to a major university and say, "I'm a physicist because I thought about it real hard and hoped I could be one and now I am one. Where's my office? Do I get a window?

Not Going To Fly.

That brings me to the fourth one on the list - discovering the unexpected beauty in nature. Unexpected? I can tell you that my study of physics has led to some unexpected levels of appreciation of nature. Take the rainbow for example. Is it not MORE beautiful to me in that like anyone else observing the rainbow I get all the color and symmetry that it presents plus I get to see a demonstration of some properties of nature that I'm familiar with. I know 'why' the colors are in the order they are in. I know why there are colors there in the first place. I know why the rainbow forms an arc that is 42 degrees around my shadow. I love seeing all this at once. I love seeing that there is a mechanism and reason behind the phenomena of the universe. To me this is MORE beauty and a fuller appreciation than the throw away phrase, "God made it".

And, in the case of the rainbow 'God made it' as a promise to not go on a planet wide killing spree again. I'll take my explanation (and it's verifiable by independent observers) over a promise from a serial killer any day.

So to say you're born again or to say you or somebody is a very spiritual person might just be a way to get some mojo for yourself without really doing anything. Look at Tim Tebow (look quick though as he is quickly moving WAY off the radar). Big guy, somewhat coordinated, can't play in the NFL. AT ALL. But with his none to subtle proselytizing he became . . . what? A lightning rod for others who can't do things so well but who also wear their spirituality on their sleeves. A behavior that takes absolutely no skill.

People say they like church because they like the community that it provides. But at what cost? This might be considered a community of people who are so insecure about their own abilities that they have to join a club of others whose only skill is to say they are born again and they love the baby Jesus. The community supports this view and by everyone agreeing with everyone gives the impression that they really got something there when in fact all they have is vapor. Vapor that is dispersed (vaporized?) at the slightest reasonable question. 

Well, I guess I'll have to be satisfied by just being born once. I'm pretty sure once was enough for my mom!

Cherry Picking

“God’s word explicitly says homosexuality is a choice, a sin,” said Reed, pastor of First Baptist Church of Gravel Ridge in Jacksonville, Arkansas. (CNN)

This in from an article about the southern baptist (southern letting you know that they are even stupider than normal babtists) church kicking the boy scouts out now that they have 'the gay'. The issue I want to discuss though is how these bigots  cherry pick a phrase from the bible to use for their own hatred. I think you have to use them all then right? If the bible is the word of god and needs no interpretation well then let's have at it!

How about the role and treatment of women?

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Whoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death. He that sacrificeth unto any god, save to the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed." (Exodus 22:18-20)


Slavery?

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.  If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.  But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her.  And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter.  If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife.  If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.  (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

Evolution? OK, don't even get me started! 

How about Murder?

Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death.  Such evil must be purged from Israel.  (Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)

The point is that on one hand you claim to have a document that is true and perfect by definition because it somehow came from the creator. On the other hand you find some really horrible things in there. How do you pick ONE and not apply the others? Try cutting off a woman's hand for helping her husband and see how that flies in court! 

Anti-Science

Well there you have it. I was going to write a piece about congressmen and senators who believe in creationism over evolution. The first link I hit said that 46% of Americans believe in creationism.

So, fuck it.

I guess if we are a government of and by the people we should expect to have representatives who are just as stupid as nearly half the general population. I don’t blame the schools. Ideas that are inserted into very young children are almost impossible to dislodge. You can run the most logical, well constructed, and evidence supported argument you like and you’re just going to get a blank look in return.

Never try to teach a pig to sing. You frustrate yourself and you annoy the pig.

And, it’s not only that they choose to believe in something that is completely impossible, full of discrepancies and self-contradictions. It’s that this is just the tip of an entire anti-science, anti-logic world view. Why study science or math? It’s all laid out in the bible (but oh so badly and only if you cherry pick!). Why devote tax dollars to pure research (and we’re not)? What for? Who needs it?

This world view is soooooo  handy too. It allows you to deny anything because you refuse to understand or appreciate a logical argument or an argument supported by evidence and experiment. Now you can deny global warming if you like. You can claim we never went to the moon if you prefer. Uncomfortable with the Holocaust? Deny it!

America cannot continue to lead (if we even are) with this mentality being so prevalent. Notice the LHC is NOT in America. The best physicists in the world are working in Switzerland. If this keeps up then in 100 years we’ll be a tiny backwater of the planet with our guns and our bibles. People will certainly leave us alone because we’ll still be devoting 80% or more of our resources to our military. But invention, innovation, creativity and zest for exploration will be happening somewhere else.

Heaven

Wow, this guys true story about going to heaven has been on the best seller list for 27 weeks! Hmmm...

Well, who doesn't like a good story! If you take solace in this or as affirmation that heaven exists then good for you. I'm not against anyone finding a little peace when thinking of the long, long sleep.

Of course all the popular accounts of people going to heaven are from people who are alive. So. . . there's that. Don't you really, really have to die to go to heaven? Better evidence of heaven would be a visit and first hand account from, say, Abe Lincoln. Or Einstein. Someone who is completely dead.

I'll be waiting for that and in the meantime I'll stick with what I told my daughter when she asked me what it was going to be like when she was dead. I told her it would be as good or bad as the year 1965 was for her (she was born in 1979). Were you miserable when you didn't exist? No. So, get ready to not be miserable again!

Pray for . . .

I recently got linked on face book for "everyone who gets this" to pray for a kid with a tumor. Now I feel bad for all kids with tumors. Hell I feel bad for kids with skinned knees. But . . .

After numerous research projects to try to do controlled experiments on the effectiveness of prayer the results are what you'd expect. No real measurable effect. Sometimes there is a positive effect. Sometimes negative. Tests have been done where the subject being prayed for knew they were being prayed for  and sometimes not. Strangely the ones who knew tended to do a little worse than those who didn't. But no matter, there is not real measurable effect.

More importantly if there was an effect why wouldn't it be 100%? If it works it works. If you're being ignored you're being ignored. but the mish mash of results coincides with prayer being completely disconnected from reality. Some people are going to do a little better and some a little worse in the normal course of events. When you try to match this up with people praying or not of course at times you're going to get a positive correlation and sometimes negative. Of course. You're matching up things that are completely disconnected. It's like trying to make a connection between people dying in car crashes and stock market change that day. You'll find a positive correlation some days. . . .some days not.

And ALL of this speaks to my big drum. What would the world look like if there were no god? Would some good things and some bad things happen every day? Of course. It's a big world and that's how things would naturally go statistically. So to any of my remaining thiest friends: Where do you see god?

And no fair waxing metaphorically! Give me something I can sink my teeth into . . .not a freaking communion wafer!

Spare Change

It occurred to me the other day that I hadn't written anything lately in this blog. Then it occurred to me that maybe there's nothing new to write. Since religion doesn't change, is against change, and is designed to NOT change it is entirely possible for me to have written everything I want to say. I guess I can just stand by and wait for the various Virgin Mary sightings in various food products in various southern states. I can keep writing about creation "science" but those guys are so boring and transparent that I lack anything new to say. Except. . .

Imaging a field of science where no new discoveries were not only not possible but not even allowed. It's all been explained already - GOD DID IT. And they want the word 'science' in what they're about. As a scientist I'd be insulted but they're all too stupid to even consider. 

So, I'm not folding up my tent but I'll be standing by just in case Jesus H. Christ really DOES make another appearance . . . and not in a plate of mashed potatoes at Denny's (that would be the Tampa Bay Denny's).

Take This . . .

This story out of Tanzania (sounds like one of those Three Stooges countries when they'd show a map.. . Moronica, Imbecillia. . . .)

AFP - Attackers collecting body parts of albinos for witchcraft have hacked off the hand of a seven-year old boy in Tanzania, the latest in a series of bloody assaults, officials said on Sunday.
"The boy was attacked on Saturday by three people as he walked home with his four school friends," said Apolinary Macheta, the local government leader in Tanzania's southwestern Milepa district.
The boy, Mwigulu Magessa, is recovering in hospital, Macheta added.
The attack came just days after an albino mother of four had her arm chopped off by machete-wielding men, with police on Saturday saying they had arrested five men after discovering the decomposing limb hidden in a field.

In Tanzania, albinos are killed and dismembered due to a widespread belief that charms made from their body parts bring good fortune and prosperity.

So these crazy bastards think magic will happen to them if they use body parts from albinos. Jeez that's crazy. The Catholic church on the other hand... (from wikipedia)

According to the Catholic Church, when the bread and wine are consecrated by the priest at Mass, they cease to be bread and wine, and become instead the Most Precious Body and Blood of Christ. The empirical appearances and attributes are not changed, but the underlying reality is. The consecration of the bread (known afterwards as the Host) and wine represents the separation of Jesus' body from his blood at Calvary; thus, this separation also represents the death of Christ. However, since according to Catholic dogma Christ has risen, the Church teaches that his body and blood are no longer truly separated, even if the appearances of the bread and the wine are. Where one is, the other must be. This is called the doctrine of concommitance. Therefore, although the priest (or minister) says, "The body of Christ", when administering the host, and, "The blood of Christ", when presenting the chalice, the communicant who receives either one receives Christ, whole and entire— "Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity".

OK.. .

My bold is "underlying reality". It struck me because it is a phrase I often use when teaching physics! Yes. For example, when you drop a steel ball and a piece of paper most people will say that the ball will hit first because it is heavy. The ball does hit first and it is heavier than the paper but that is not WHY it hits first....there is an underlying reality. The difference between my underlying reality and the church's is that mine can be checked. I ball up the paper into a tight ball. I make the point that the paper is the same weight as it was before. I drop the steel ball and the ball of paper again and this time they strike the floor together. The underlying reality is that things fall to the earth with the same acceleration but air resistance clouds this issue. When we strip it away (as the astronauts on Appolo 15 did so nicely for us) the underlying reality is revealed!

The church claims that the bread and wine are not changed but the underlying reality is. Prove it! What does it even mean to say that basically no measurable quality of the bread and wine is changed but reality itself is. What do we have to our reality except appearances and attributes?

This is a bold claim and one wonders that coupled with such claims as this, is this why the church must embellish itself in all the hoopla, latin, pointy hats, gold crosses, magic water, etc. The claim is outrageous but look over here at all the shiny stuff and don't think about it.

Guns

There are so many guns out there and no proven method to secure them. The people who buy them are mostly responsible gun owners but once they’ve jumped through all the hoops to purchase their weapons there is no way to insure that the guns are secure.  As in the most recent tragedy in Connecticut it wasn’t the owner herself who used the guns but her deranged son. How did he get at them? Society cannot guarantee that the guns out their won’t get into the wrong hands.

The NRA suggests more guns. Of course. Somehow if we are all armed we will all be safer. But this flies in the face of the basic premise that the more guns the more chance that a gun will get into the wrong hands. More just increases the odds of a bad thing happening.

Here are my suggestions

1. Ban all assault weapons. These are for armed forces. If you want one or think you need one then YOU have a mental problem. Buy a Corvette instead. If we ban assault weapons there will be a few owners who will feel put upon and that their ‘rights’ have been trampled. This in the face of the huge majority of us who would feel safer if these weapons were not around at all.

2. If you already have an assault type weapon the government should buy it back at double what you paid for it.

3. The only guns citizens can own are revolvers and bolt action rifles. All hunters will still be able to hunt. All target shooters will still be able to compete. Anyone who feels they are safer with a hand gun can still feel safer. Fancy weapons, large clips and semi-automatic weapons are reserved for police and military.

Will this guarantee that a tragedy won’t happen in the future? No. Will it reduce the odds? Yes - and the constitution is intact.

Final two thoughts from the political arena . . . for now.

1. There is so much ‘our way or the highway’ in politics now. People get in office and if they have a 1 person majority in the house think they’re going to make the country just the way they want. Any ideas from the other side or ideas that are not on their check list are BAD. Of course getting everything you want never happens in politics and of course it never happens in life. When you buy a house you have your wish list but then you deal and compromise and you get one that has most of the features you had in mind. Of course. Unless you’re part of the 1% that have unlimited resources and you just have the house of your dreams built for you. The rest of us are compromising with our house/apartments.

So to enter the complex arena of US politics and think you can just run roughshod over the rest of us is not reasonable. It’s not good politics and it certainly is NOT governing. And yet that seems to be the attitude, and I think mostly from the Republican party, but all share some of the guilt. This is crazy because listen . . .

Any politician at any level was elected by about half the people. Not many elections go 95% - 5%. So, now that you’ve been ‘elected’ it’s time to get to work and govern. To think that you’re in there just to beat the drum of your constituents and by constituents I mean the large corporations that got you elected is not in the spirit of, well, governing! Maybe every corporate donor should get a letter like this . . .

Thank you for your contribution for the re-election of Rufus T. Bilkem for US Congress. As you know the Congressman stands for motherhood, babies (all of them), and death to commies but.. . . should he get elected he’ll have to temper those main ideas and look to get done what he can in the face of the godless liberals. So, for example, you’ll understand it if the congressman has to trade an increase in your company’s taxes for a reduction in greenhouse gasses. The greater good and all that, right! So thanks again and stand by!

Hmmm...probably not going to happen.

2. Suspected Mind Set of the Republican Party.

The Republicans got their asses handed to them on election day and maybe it was partly for subtly promising things that they can’t deliver. I think the subliminal message from the Republicans is, “Stick with us, vote for us, and we’ll get things back to the way they were”. Now the way they were is a nebulous idea. Back to Leave it to Beaver -  when negroes had separate drinking fountains? Back to before the New Deal when we had 30% unemployment and no social safety net? Back to the frontier days when men were gun toting men and women couldn’t vote? (now they only can’t drive!).

I kid!

There is no time period that IS America. This is disconcerting to ALL of us sometimes but we marshal on. America is a crazy, ever changing amusement park. There is NO time when it was not changing. Always going from one thing to another. LIke music, we all think that the stuff WE heard when WE were growing up was the best music ever (well in my case (Beatles, Stones, need I go on?)  it’s actually true but you get the idea.). America is going to get browner. It is. America is going to have at least 2 languages. It is. America is going to have a variety of couples loving and raising amazing children. It is.

Other trends are less predictable. Is American going to sit and stew in an unproductive snit of fundamentalist religious zealotry? Are we going to lose our ability to be the innovative champions of the planet? Are we going to be so stupid to just go fucking broke? Are we still going to be the people who go into space? We’ll see.

One thing I think will not change is that we will continue to be the Jack Reacher country of the planet. The one that you really don’t want to mess with. We have a really scary military* while in general we are a pretty friendly people. That’s a good combination but you do NOT want to piss us off. Ask Japan. Ask Germany. Ask Osama.

So to govern in America now is to think not what America is nor, especially, what it was, but where it is going. What are the trends? What is the rate of change in all the various social and political areas where things do change.

Do we elect anyone who thinks this way?

* One US nuclear submarine is more powerful than all but about 3 countries on the planet (and none of them are Iran, N. Korea, nor Argentina) . . . and we have several of them, so . . .

Election Hangover

Well, I guess I’m glad that my guy won. Do I think that somehow the government will start working? That real compromise will happen? That decisions will be made based on what’s best for most of the people as opposed to what’s best for the party or for the companies that donated millions to the campaign?

I have no thoughts like that. I expect that all Democratic ideas will be deemed messages from Satan while Republican ideas will be seen as the rise of the 3rd Reich. But one thing this election holds off for another 4 years is the freak show that would have been the Republicans re-entering Washington with a parade of the anti-science crowd, the anti-intellectuals, the global warming deniers, the moon landing deniers, flat earthers, evolution deniers, ect. Do you see the common thread here? The Republicans are just so fucking negative. No. NO, NO, NO! They depress me. They offer no hope. No ideas, just denial.  And their faith.

And there’s the thing that I still can’t wrap my head around. How is it that being a ‘person of faith’ puts you a rung up in the good guy club? Hell it puts you in the ‘capable of leading the country’ club. A person of faith believes something is true even though it cannot ever be proved to be true. If it could be proven to be true there would be no need to have faith in it and you’d have to find some other un-provable thing to have faith in or I guess you get kicked out of the good guy club.

So, what if Jesus Fucking Christ* showed up in a three piece suit at Times Square and said, ‘Yep I’m real. I exist and all the stuff about the trinity, the soul, the miracles, and life ever after is completely true. I can even demonstrate that it is true. Watch this. . . .’

And in an instant every TV on the planet switches to his image and him speaking in real time. As he’s talking his dad (he looks like Jerry Garcia) walks onto the scene, puts his arm around his son and also reassures everyone that it’s all demonstrably true. In fact he’s anxious to talk with the physicists at Fermi Lab and CERN as they are very close to discovering an ultimate truth with the Higgs particle the ramifications of which would explain the miracles and the current TV transmission. No laws of physics being broken just some unrevealed laws being optimized and used in clever ways. (Think showing TV to a cave man!). And the father says, "Really no need for all the praying and church going since our existence and power are true anyway so you can just simmer down. We kind of hate the music anyway."

So the supernatural becomes the mundane. You don’t have to believe. It’s true anyway! What would the faithful do? Would they turn away? Would they go back to worshiping the sun? Would they become New Jesus deniers? Go Muslim? Ha! Like when someone lifts the drape behind the magician and ‘ruins it’. A theist’s (wow, you sure need the space between the A and the t there!) little private world where things are true because they wish, hope and ‘have faith’, that they are true would become another part of our external reality.

I guess they want Jesus to be real. . . but not TOO real!

Well, anyway for the coming time I guess it’s best to keep asking tough questions. When someone wants something to be true because it makes them feel better or helps their bottom line you have to politely ask for the data, the research, the REASON. And really, let’s do be polite because if there is one thing the Republican party is not it’s polite. It’s not that hard to be polite. You’re mom and dad taught you this. Use it.

*Wouldn’t it be cool if Jesus’ middle name really was Fucking?

Life Ever After

Wow, after reading snippets of various religions views of the after life I come away with these observations.

1. Different religions have different ideas of the afterlife... Think about that but hurry.

2. Most of the versions of the afterlife are based on interpretations of some bible reference. Again, if this is THE word from the creator why does it have to be interpreted and if so why no clarifications or re-writes for the last 5000 years or so. Hello. We have internet now!

3. I very much like the Catholic deal of Limbo (which the church may or may not cop to). This invention allows for Jesus to still be the son of the creator but takes care of the billions of souls born before him (proto-man too? Lemurs?. . .don't ask!). They just have to wait. NEXT! AND it takes care of those who die without being baptized. You see they  have the stinky sin on them even if they died at the age of 7 days. "Take a fucking number shorty"!

4. Let's keep in mind that the Egyptians had elaborate afterlife scenarios and rules about 4000 years before the invention of Christianity. Not a new idea.

5. There is not one example of anybody or any creature living on after the death of the body. Not one. There is no reasonable mechanism for how this would work. There is no identifiable place where these souls (if they indeed take up space) would occupy. Life evolved on this planet because it did. It is the logical direction that self replicating systems take. The fact that those systems are currently self conscious and frightened by staring into the abyss does not change the facts.

We live. We die. Just like every creature, plant and tree has done for billions of years. So, try to be nice for the short time you're here. We'd all appreciate that.

The Earth Goes Around the Sun

It does. But, it certainly doesn't look that way. It is and it was reasonable to build a system in which the sun goes around the earth. This was the view for thousands of years supported by the likes of Aristotle and then the catholic church. Even suggesting that it might be the other way round could get you into deep trouble with the church.

A geocentric model of the universe

From our lofty position in the 21st century we might wonder why the church cared which celestial object went around which. The church didn't really care on a scientific basis. They didn't have a scientific ax to grind it was just that it had been taught the other way so long and 'change' is just not in their vocabulary. This coupled with the idea that the earth is special and created by God and all heavens are just a light show for our evenings' entertainment. If we are special  then we ought to be at the center (not the third rock out) with everything going around us and the data be damned.

Now, from a purely scientific point of view it is not unreasonable to suggest that the sun (and everything else for that matter) goes around the earth. Like I said, it certainly looks that way. A hypothesis that says this is certainly a testable hypothesis. It can be well formed and it was and many models that tried to fit the data to the model were tried. In the end they all fall away at the beauty and simplicity of a sun centered system. The simplist explanation is usually the correct one (Ocam's Razor) and this is a fine example of it.

Why don't we teach students that the sun MIGHT go around the earth? It's a reasonable suggestion. Shouldn't ALL possible explanations be presented to the students? Isn't that fair?

Well it might be fair on some planet but it's not what is done in science class. As a history lesson it is and should be taught. As a good example of a well formed hypothesis that ended up being wrong* it should be taught. But it is certainly not taught as a possible reality that should be seriously considered.

The proponents of Creationism would like you to believe that they have a viable and well formed hypothesis and therefore it must be taught along with any other hypothesis that explains speciazation and basically how things got this way in our biosphere. The problem they have is that their hypothesis is so poorly formed. You can't have a scientific hypothesis that basically says that things were created out of nothing by a magically being. Why? Because it is untestable. There is no experiment you can do to SEE if the creator works or worked this way or whether or not he (or she) even exists. PLUS, we don't teach anything about a magical being in public school because that is the equivalent of teaching religion and of course that is the Creationist goal all along. They really don't have a science ax to grind. They only have a religion ax to grind and apparently teaching crazy shit on Sunday and as much as they want in their own home isn't enough for them. They want the magic rammed down everyone's throat whether they are believers or not.

We don't teach that the sun goes around the earth because, although this is reasonable, it is also testable and turns out to be wrong. We don't (at least we shouldn't) teach that the species we see on the planet were formed as is by an un-seen magical hand because for one it fails to cover all the facts and is just a bad model but more to the point of this article it is un-testable and has no place in the science class room. Teach it in religion class. Teach it in history class. Teach it in a class about different cultures but let's keep it OUT of the science classroom unless you need an example of really bad scientific method!

*By the way, there is a sentiment out there that says things to the effect that theories come and go. They work and then they are proved wrong. It is important to know that there virtually zero examples of a working theory being proved 'wrong'. It's already working, see? A hypothesis can be proved wrong. That's why it's called a hypothesis. People think that Newton was proved 'wrong' by Einstein. That's not the case. Newton's laws of gravitation work just fine and got us to the moon and back. Einstein extended the ideas to include crazy fast speed and crazy huge masses. Einsteins work reduces to Newton's if you let speed and/or mass be small. Evolution is way past being a hypothesis. It is a firmly established theory that explains how things got this way. It already works. To argue its veracity now is to just be very annoying and frankly transparent in your true goals (prayer in school). 

Oh Hell

This is from the Sept 23 CNN religion piece.

My snarkiness in red.


My Faith: Hell is for real and Jesus is the only way out
Editor's Note: Mark Driscoll is founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

I like that in his head shot he needs a shave and is wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Nice.

By Mark Driscoll, Special to CNN
As a pastor, my job is to tell the truth. Your job is to make a decision.
When controversies over biblical doctrines arise, it’s a humbling opportunity to answer questions about what the Bible teaches without getting into name-calling and mudslinging. Near the very top of the controversial doctrines is hell.
What happens when we die?
Human beings were created by God with both a physical body and a spiritual soul. When someone dies, their body goes into the grave and their spirit goes into an afterlife to face judgment.

Here's why theists and atheists cannot have a rational conversation. The theist begins with a completely unprovable statement with no supporting evidence and then just takes off from there. No evidence that we were created by God. No evidence of a soul. No evidence that we go to an afterlife. So any 'discussion' now about  the existence or the nature of hell is bogus.

But death is not normal or natural—it’s an enemy and the consequence of sin.

I can't think of a truer statement than the exact opposite. Everything dies and that is completely normal or we'd run out of room on this spaceship.

Think of it in this way: God is the source of life. When we choose to live independently of God and rebelliously against God it is akin to unplugging something from its power source. It begins to lose power until it eventually dies.

All metaphor with no content.

The Bible is clear that one day there will be a bodily resurrection for everyone, to either eternal salvation in heaven or eternal condemnation in hell.

The bible is anything but clear. That is why people have entire PAID careers 'interpreting' it.

Christians believe a person’s eternal status depends on their relationship with Jesus and that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Our lives are shaped by the reality that “whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

 Ok, just now I said to myself that I believe in Jesus Christ as my savior. Am I in? Do I have to say it more? Do I have to say it out loud. Do I have to say it in a church. Do I have to say it 'in my heart'?
 
What does Jesus say about hell? 

Note: There is not one document from Jesus' time quoting him nor did he write anything himself. So when we say, "Jesus said. . . " you don't really know who the speaker is.


Jesus was emphatically clear on the subject of hell. He alone has risen from death and knows what awaits us on the other side of this life. A day of judgment is coming when all of us — even you — will rise from our graves and stand before him for eternal sentencing to either worshiping in his kingdom or suffering in his hell.
The Bible could not be clearer: (come on!) “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” (ouch!)
These are not just obscure Bible verses. (Oh no I'm sure they're not) In fact, Jesus talks (maybe) about hell more than anyone else in Scripture. Amazingly, 13% of his sayings are about hell and judgment, and more than half of his parables relate to the eternal judgment of sinners.

Amazing to me that someone has enough time on their hands to figure out how many times a mythical figure referred to a mythical place. Of course I read the Cubs website everyday. . .

Keep in mind that Jesus’ words come in the context of the rest of Scripture, which says that God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Furthermore, he “is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
God is far more loving, kind and patient with his enemies than we are with our enemies.

Well, now I see how clear the bible is. If we're bad we go to hell. Well . . . maybe not.

What does the rest of the Bible say about hell? 

Again, this is all conjecture!

You can read on but I think you get the idea. You make up an entire structure of creation, omnipotence, goodness, evil, gods returning to earth, impregnating virgins who remain so and people rising from the grave all with not a shred of evidence and then expect people to listen to arguments about the nuances. Well, sadly,  they do don't they.

The Bible gives us many descriptions of hell including (1) fire; (2) darkness; (3) punishment; (4) exclusion from God’s presence; (5) restlessness; (6) second death; and (7) weeping and gnashing of teeth in agony.
A common misperception of Satan is that he’s in a red suit, holding a pitchfork at the gates of hell. But Satan will not[j1]  reign there. Hell is a place of punishment that God prepared for the devil and his angels, and it’s where those who live apart from God will, according to Revelation:

. . . drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb [Jesus Christ]. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.

At the end of the age, the devil will be “thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
Hell will be ruled over by Jesus, and everyone present — humans and demons and Satan alike — will be tormented there continually in perfect justice.
Jesus says, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ... And these will go away into eternal punishment.”
Is there a second chance after death?
The Bible is clear that we die once and are then judged without any second chance at salvation. As one clear example, Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”
We live. We die. We face judgment. Period.
How long does the punishment last?
Some argue that the punishment of sinners is not eternal, a view called annihilationism. This means that after someone dies apart from Jesus, they suffer for a while and then simply cease to exist.
Annihilationism is simply not what the Bible teaches. Daniel 12:2 says, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Jesus speaks of those who “will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Grammatically, there is no difference here between the length of time mentioned for “life” and that for “punishment”; rather, there is simply eternal life and eternal death.
Am I going to hell?
The good news is that the closing verses of the Bible say, “Come!” Everyone is invited to receive the free gift of God’s saving grace in Jesus. Jesus is God become a man to reconcile mankind to God.
He lived the sinless life we have not lived, died a substitutionary death on the cross for our sins. He endured our wrath, rose to conquer our enemies of sin and death, and ascended to heaven where he is ruling as Lord over all today. He did this all in love.
The stark reality is this: either Jesus suffered for your sins to rescue you from hell, or you will suffer for your sins in hell. These are the only two options and you have an eternal decision to make.
My hope and prayer is that you would become a Christian.
Have you confessed your sins to Jesus Christ, seeking forgiveness and salvation?
If not, you are hellbound, and there is no clever scholar who will be of any help when you stand before Jesus Christ for judgment. You’re not required to like hell as much as you need to believe in it, turn from your sin, trust in Jesus, and be saved from an eternal death into an eternal life.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Mark Driscoll.

Rock me Jesus

Well, there you have it. Now its happened to me. Innocently walking around the Lincoln Square neighborhood the other day I spot this rock. It seemed to call to me. When I got down and looked closer I see the image of Christ on it. See it? Is that not the lord on said rock. Of course it is. If I see it and I get this idea then it must be the truth. Networks will be flocking to this rock soon. Pilgrims will come and light candles and pray at the Lincoln Square Miracle Rock. The blind shall see and the lame (but not me) shall walk.

Jesus Christ (alledgedly)

Fred Mertz

What's that you say? You say that this rock guy doesn't look like Jesus Christ? I say it does! And, since Jesus had no portraits of him painted while he was alive NO ONE knows what he looks like. He could look like Fred Mertz for all we know. But I do now what he looks like. I have been chosen.

So, since my sighting is clearly divine (No I don't have to "prove" it! The lord spoke to me and MADE me look at this rock so just SHUT IT!) my rock is holy and worthy of your worship. Also if you like to make a small donation to the Rock Me Jesus Grandchildren College Fund a tax deduction letter will be generated.

Of course there's this annoying research that shows that our brains are wired to look for faces. Research cited here shows that it doesn't take much for a bell to go off in our brain and 'FACE' to be transmitted to our cerebral cortex. Let that face even remotely resemble someone famous (Jesus, Mary, Ernie Banks, etc) and more bells go off as the 'face' matches an already stored image.

Nothing like an ugly fact to ruin a perfectly wonderful miracle. Rock on!

Heaven Help Us!

Thinking about heaven today. . .

Now I'm no expert since I don't think there is such a thing. . .no evidence anyway.

NONE!

But fun to play devil's advocate and ask, what if?

What if there was a heaven and what would it be like? One of the standard models is that you are there and happy but can 'see' your friends and loved ones. You "look down from above". That's nice. But really think about that. You can see your friends and loved ones but you cannot interact. At first they're miserable (or somewhat bummed) because you're dead but you can offer no solace. As you watch them and the years wear on you see them heading for trouble maybe but you cannot do a thing to warn them or help them. You might watch them die in a firey crash. Burning slowly in great pain. This is heaven?

Or just consider time itself. If you are conscious and I guess you're supposed to be or heaven is just binge drinking then you'd sense time. Right? You get to 'live' like this for eternity.  You exist frozen in amber? Endless bliss? If you are still YOU then wouldn't you want, I don't know, a hot dog? A ball game? Sex? Just endless bliss and contentment but no books?

And eternity is a long time! Do you go on after the end of the universe?

My point is that I think the whole idea of living on eternally has not been well thought out! Sounds good since we are wired to avoid being dead but maybe not workable. 

Wal-Mart

I am so sick of the Wal-Mart commercials during the Olympics. They all feature a breathless American just about squirting her shorts over the fact that she could have saved $7.25 if ONLY she had shopped at Wal-Mart. Oh.....Fail!

Two points....

1. Wal-Mart has single handely destroyed small town America. They did this by just undercutting small local merchants. They did this by buying boat loads of shit made in China by workers making 25 cents an hour. I hate Wal-Mart but I'm equally depressed about America the consumer that ONLY looks at price and not the effect. Yes you can save a couple of bucks by shopping at Walmart but at what real price? The price is having a really ugly box in your town (actually just outside by the interstate)  with a giant black top parking lot. The price is having no small shops or neighborhood merchants. No walking down the street and window shopping. No expertise. No real choice. You're going to have to buy the Chinese shit that comes on the giant Walmart truck or nothing since all of your downtown shops are now closed. Wal-Mart did this but we went along.

2. Shopping at Wal-Mart is not a fun thing like it shows in the commercials. Much like how they show casino commercials without any oxygen bottles. It's a depressing place with shitty merchandise, dirty floors, uncaring, uneducated, minimum wage help if you can find them, and a depressing, flourescent display of tattoed Americans.

You have to decide if the money you save on buying a fucking bag of Cheetos is worth what a Wal-Mart will do to your neighborhood. Last Christmas I shopped at all small shops in my home town of Chicago. I shopped on Broadway and on Lincoln Ave in Lincoln Square. I had pleasant conversations with merchants and bought interesting little things for people. It was a Christmas shopping experience that I really enjoyed. Can you say that after doing an hour at a Wal-Mart during the holiday season?

People will say that Wal-Mart generates jobs. Sure, minimum wage, retail jobs with no skills needed while the Wal family is currently worth over 100 BILLION dollars. Yes, I had to check that myself - B I L L I O N S.  So your joy at your $7.25 discount is laughed at by the Wal family as they enjoy their BILLIONS and fuck small towns.

Oh, forgot the blog. . . There is no God either!

CNN Religion column with comments

The usual Sunday religion article. My comments are embedded....

By Timothy Keller, Special to CNN

(CNN)–When I was diagnosed with cancer, the question “Why me?” was a natural one.
Later, when I survived but others with the same kind of cancer died, I also had to ask, “Why me?”
Suffering and death seem random, senseless.

Suffering and death ARE random.

The recent Aurora, Colorado, shootings — in which some people were spared and others lost — is the latest, vivid example of this, but there are plenty of others every day: from casualties in the Syria uprising to victims of accidents on American roads. Tsunamis, tornadoes, household accidents - the list is long.
As a minister, I’ve spent countless hours with suffering people crying: “Why did God let this happen?” In general I hear four answers to this question. Each is wrong, or at least inadequate.

CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories

The first answer is “I guess this proves there is no God.” The problem with this thinking is that the problem of senseless suffering does not go away if you abandon belief in God.

Actually, no one has to prove there is no God. You can't prove a negative. It is on the faithful to prove there IS a God.

In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that if there was no higher divine law, there would be no way to tell if any particular human law was unjust. Likewise, if there is no God, then why do we have a sense of outrage and horror when suffering and tragedy occur? The strong eat the weak, there is no meaning, so why not?

If it takes higher laws to validate lower laws then how is there not an infinite progression of higher and higher laws? Also, the argument assumes that there SHOULD be meaning but who said that was true? Maybe there is no universal meaning to all of this but each person finds his own or  not. The argument crumbles then.

Friedrich Nietzsche exemplified that idea. When the atheist Nietzsche heard that a natural disaster had destroyed Java in 1883, he wrote a friend: “Two-hundred-thousand wiped out at a stroke—how magnificent!”
Because there is no God, Nietzsche said, all value judgments are arbitrary. All definitions of justice are just the results of your culture or temperament.

My Take: This is where God was in Aurora

As different as they were, King and Nietzsche agreed on this point. If there is no God or higher divine law then violence is perfectly natural.

Violence is perfectly natural is a very hot button sentence. Is there violence in the world? Yes. Is it 'perfectly natural'? Hmmm..., when a lion takes down an antelope that's very violent and perfectly natural. When a crazed gunman takes out a movie theater that is very violent and perfectly UNnatural. OK, what does either say about a possible God?

So abandoning belief in God doesn’t help with the problem of suffering at all.

And keeping a belief in God doesn't change the suffering either. What's the point?

The second response to suffering is: “While there is a God, he’s not completely in control of everything. He couldn’t stop this.”
But that kind of God doesn’t really fit our definition of “God.”

How convenient! 

So that thinking hardly helps us with reconciling God and suffering.

The third answer to the worst kind of suffering – seemingly senseless death – is: “God saves some people and lets others die because he favors and rewards good people.”
But the Bible forcefully rejects the idea that people who suffer more are worse people than those who are spared suffering.
This was the self-righteous premise of Job’s friends in that great Old Testament book. They sat around Job, who was experiencing one sorrow after another, and said “The reason this is happening to you and not us is because we are living right and you are not.”
At the end of the book, God expresses his fury at Job’s ”miserable comforters.” The world is too fallen and deeply broken to fall into neat patterns of good people having good lives and bad people having bad lives.

Yes but then it is much more easily and better explained to have no invented God at all than a disinterested one.

The fourth answer to suffering in the face of an all-powerful God is that God knows what he’s doing, so be quiet and trust him.
This is partly right, but inadequate. It is inadequate because it is cold and because the Bible gives us more with which to face the terrors of life.
God did not create a world with death and evil in it. It is the result of humankind turning away from him.  

So, we all get continually punished for someone or ones 'turning away' 5000 years ago? At which evolutionary stage did we 'turn away from God'. Australopithecus? Java Man, Lucy?

We were put into this world to live wholly for him, and when instead we began to live for ourselves everything in our created reality began to fall apart, physically, socially and spiritually. Everything became subject to decay.

So I am to accept an egotistical God who wants me to wholly live for him. . . what ever that means. Why does God need me to do this? And, the instruction book is a little sketchy! I won't get into the problems with the bible but just mention treatment of women and slaves. 

But God did not abandon us. Only Christianity of all the world’s major religions teaches that God came to Earth in Jesus Christ and became subject to suffering and death himself, dying on the cross to take the punishment our sins deserved, so that someday he can return to Earth to end all suffering without ending us.

But you don't really KNOW that. There is no way to KNOW that God came to earth in Jesus. You were taught that. If Jesus was a complete nut ball and made the whole thing up. . . the story would be exactly the same. 

Do you see what this means? We don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, or why it is so random, but now at least we know what the reason isn’t, what it can’t be.
It can’t be that he doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he doesn’t care. He is so committed to our ultimate happiness that he was willing to plunge into the greatest depths of suffering himself.

Stating that God allows evil and suffering to continue implies that he could stop it if he wanted to. So he gets himself nailed to a cross to show he cares while suffering and random violence continue unabated.  I guess I'm just unimpressed with this effort.

Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter

Someone might say, “But that’s only half an answer to the question ‘Why?'” Yes, but it is the half that we need. If God actually explained all the reasons why he allows things to happen as they do, it would be too much for our finite brains.

How do you know? We have pretty good brains. What a smug and convenient answer!

What we truly need is what little children need. They can’t understand most of what their parents allow and disallow for them. They need to know their parents love them and can be trusted. We need to know the same thing about God.

Sure they trust us. . . that's why you can infect their minds with religion at a young age but not after they've reached the age of reason. 

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Timothy Keller.

Luck?

A Megabus crashed yesterday due to a blown tire with many passengers injured and one fatality. Here's one person's story:

Siegal said she believed she was uninjured because her father gave her a dollar to give to charity, a Jewish tradition that helped protect her en route.

"I believe it was that money that kept me out without a scratch," said Siegal.

How can any sane person believe that? First off.. . . how does it work? What's the mechanism by which money given in one place turns into some sort of protective shield for you in an entirely different place? How does that even sound plausible? And, if you're so protected why didn't this bit of sorcery prevent the bus tire from blowing in the first place?

What about the other people who got off the bus without a scratch? Did they all give a dollar to charity? If not isn't it more reasonable to 'believe' that the nature of the crash was that not everyone was being maimed and you happen to be in that group? What if you had given 2 dollars? Maybe you get off the bus without a scratch and you're teeth are magically straightened.

Why do we rush to the unreasonable scenario? 

Oh it BURNS!

Motivational speaker Tony Robbins recently got a number of idiots to walk on a bed of hot coals. Apparently if you really believe in yourself and release your inner power you won't get burned and if you don't....well, then you get what's coming to you NANCY!

I listened to an interview with one of the believers who did not get burned and he basically blamed the victims. If they don't believe in themselves properly, well, then that's what happens!

From another participant: Carolyn Graves, a 50-year old real estate agent from Toronto, claimed that those who were injured “were out of state,” and thus not in the correct frame of mind to walk painlessly across the fiery floor. She glamorized the event to the New York Times, noting that the fire walk “transformed people’s lives in a single night,” serving as a “metaphor for facing your fears and accomplishing your goals. [Note to self: why am I still so poor when there are so many cretins willing to give away their money? Oh yeah. . . scruples. Damn!]


Now here are two possible explanations for the walking on coals deal.

1. If your feet are sweating or damp you have a layer of that moisture between you and the coals. If you keep moving fast enough the heat won't get through the moisture to your feet. That's pretty simple high school physics. In fact I've seen physicist perform this very demonstration to show how it works.

2, If you "believe in yourself" or are "in state" then I guess this suspends the laws of physics for you. In other words everyone would get burned wet feet or not but belief in yourself suspends that. OK, by what mechanism? If it is a real thing then it works in some real way. How? Explain it. Demonstrate it in a repeatable way.

Well you can't do a controlled experiment and Tony Robbins and others like him (Kevin Trudeau) don't want to do or say anything that CAN be tested empirically.  In this case you can't really measure 'believing in yourself' so as to make two sets of people, those who do and those who don't, and see who gets burned. No, the zeolot lets the phenomena itself, which they made up, determine who has the required level of belief or not which is completely ass-backwards.

Does any of this sound familiar? How about going to heaven. Or hell? Or god sparing a life during a tornado? Or just the all encompassing - God works in mysterious ways. Yeah, so do all snake oil salesmen!

The Rainbow

According to the bible the rainbow is God's sign of his covenant with man. That is God's promise that he'll try to control his temper and never again destroy every living thing on the earth except for a few lucky ones. Interestingly, I read a religion blog that seems to think that this is the essence of hope. That God loves us sooooo much that he will only kill 99.999% of us but always leave a remnant of hope. That's the kind of hope that keeps state lotteries going by the way. Forget all the logical problems with Noah and flood myth (Where did the water go? Where did it come from? Really? ALL the animals? How many do you suppose that would be? Only 2 of each. . .that ain't going to work!) and let's just talk about the promise itself.

We were very wicked and had to ALL be destroyed. The animals too for some reason. Seems harsh. Why not invent radio 5000 years ago and get your message delivered a little more efficiently? Wait, are you just crabby because you don't like they way your own creations are behaving? Maybe you should have created them a little differently then. NOPE. They all (save lucky Noah and Mrs Noah who thought she could have married a doctor. Who knew?) have to be destroyed. Were there any good people that got destroyed? Where there any innocent animals that got destroyed? This is the behavior that is supposed to inspire hope? Richard Speck murdered all the nurses in that apartment save one. Thanks Dick!

Now to the rainbow. The rainbow is God's sign of the covenant. Question: were there no rainbows before the flood? It had to rain. The sun had to shine. Given that you're going to get rainbows once in awhile.

When I look at a rainbow (and I do love them) I enjoy those bright primary school colors and the perfect shape of the bow. Through my study of physics and geometry I understand where the colors come from. I can recreate the phenomena in my lab. I understand why they are in the order they are in. I can show why the rainbow occurs at an angle of 42 degrees from the line of the sun. I even can explain why there is a secondary (and even a tertiary) bow. On and on. At no point do I run into a problem where the only path left open is . . . God did it. It just doesn't happen.

And all of this just makes the rainbow more amazing to me. The beauty that it has in itself plus all the layers of understanding that it incorporates when I observe one. Layers and layers of beauty and awe. I don't see this sort of layering if all you got is, "God made it". Done. I guess many among us are drawn to the short simple non-explanation.